I was working out of town this week. I put in 4, 10 hour days so my weekend started Thursday afternoon. I was almost home and driving along a stream up the road from my house and this is what I saw.

I may need some advice from the greatest beaver trapper I know, Ski!! I found a beaver slide and set a snare in the water at the slide and put some castor at the bottom of the slide. Think that will work?

Ski, I forgot to tell you during our phone conversation, the beaver slide is on a steep bank and about 5 feet from top to the water line. I put a beaver lure at the top and castor at the bottom before the water. Is this OK?

personally rick i would have done it in reverose, or just done one or the other.... the castor is going to make him made and make him wanna go up and distory it so "the other beaver" knows he is king there

_________________never forget where you came from because getting lost can turn out bad

Check out my you tube page!!! alot of the stuff i learned on here i have made video's of them ..... http://www.youtube.com/user/ski31989?feature=mhee

So much for spring, got up this morning to sunshine but it was 28 degrees. Checked out the snare I set, my support wire was gone and the snare was pulled farther into the water, empty . I could see the beaver was busy last night because he cut down a couple of small trees. Well, I just reset the snare and going to try again.

I finally caught my first beaver after 30 years of trapping! Although I really never went after them much because the population isn't very big around here but I always wanted to catch one. Mission accomplished!

By the way. This is a 35 pound beaver.

Many thanks to Ski!, He gave me some direction and and 2 330 cinbears and a #3 foothold!

You can only do "the first time" ONCE! Good going Rick! Be sure and post what you did with the pelt.

Well Swamp, I fleshed and stretched my first beaver and this is the outcome. Now, let the pro beaver handlers let me know if I did wrong, I know that they are not the easiest to flesh! I'm going to have it tanned and put on the wall with my "other firsts".

tack it down some more rick! you want to get a nail every inch or inch and a half. they really exert some force when they dry and will shrink some. you also want to use 1/2 plywood, minimum, if you are going to trap more as they will actually warp the board if its less than that. also pound a couple nails into each leg hole to keep em closed while it dries so they dont pull apart. looks like a good fleshing job! oh yeah, i cut the lips, whiskers, and nose off...start at one end of the whiskers with a good sharp knife and try to cut just along the edge of them. hope that helps some

Trapper Al- Thanks! I'll put a few more nails in and close up the legs. Now that I'm looking at the picture you could really tell that it needs tacked down a few more places. I also raised the pelt off of the board a little.

Erik- Good luck on your first beaver. Ski told me to set a 330 conibear in a channel and it worked like a charm.

congrats!! i got my first flat-tail this year. it was a great moment!! if you want a video, i would recommend the fur-fish-game professional beaver trapping dvd. my trapping mentor didn't trap beavers so i had to try and figure it out on my own. good luck in the future!!

Trapperrick: PM me your address. I can send you a pattern for making beaver boards. They basically just trace out as ovals of different size so you can keep the edges and sides of the hide even on the board.

_________________Ive gone to look for myself. If I should return while I'm gone, please keep me here.

Do not rule out the use of a beaver hoop. They are several times faster that the old plywood method plus the hides dry faster cause both sides of the hide is exposed to the air. If you want an oval pelt, add the tension bar to the hoop. The bar is 4 dollars. How many times have you had to pull nails and reposition a pelt on the board? With the hoop the pelt goes on the first time everytime. Good Luck

Do not rule out the use of a beaver hoop. They are several times faster that the old plywood method plus the hides dry faster cause both sides of the hide is exposed to the air. If you want an oval pelt, add the tension bar to the hoop. The bar is 4 dollars. How many times have you had to pull nails and reposition a pelt on the board? With the hoop the pelt goes on the first time everytime. Good Luck

Bring the beaver hoop and tension bar to the rendezvous....some of us would like to see them.